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Pasta Calculator
How much dry pasta per person, how much sauce to go with it, and how much salt the water needs.
Your results
Pasta
400 g
Sauce
600 ml
Water
4 L
Salt for the water
40 g
A hundred grams of dry pasta per person for a main course, sixty for a side or an Italian-style first plate. Fresh pasta weighs more for the same amount of flour, so add half again — 150 g of fresh is 100 g of dry.
One litre of water per hundred grams of pasta, and ten grams of salt per litre. That is the "salty as the sea" rule with a number attached. Most of the salt goes down the drain; what stays is the only chance to season the pasta itself rather than just the sauce on it.
Save a cup of the cooking water before you drain. The starch suspended in it is what makes a sauce cling to the pasta instead of pooling under it — a splash into the pan, tossed hard, does more for the dish than more cream ever will.
Questions people ask
How much pasta per person?
100 g dry for a main course, 60 g for a side. Fresh pasta: 150 g and 90 g respectively.
How much pasta salad for 50 people?
About 3 kg of dry pasta, which triples to roughly 9 kg dressed. Pasta salad is served cold as a side, so 60 g dry a head is the right base.
How much sauce per person?
About 150 ml. A jar of shop sauce is usually 400-500 ml, so one jar dresses three people properly — most people stretch one jar over four and wonder why it tastes thin.